No one — not states, taxpayers, or Medicaid patients — benefits from forced funding of Planned Parenthood, and the Supreme Court should affirm that.
No one -- not states, taxpayers, or Medicaid patients -- benefits from forced funding of Planned Parenthood, and the Supreme Court should affirm that.
W hen Planned Parenthood’s lawyers went hat in hand to the U.S. Supreme Court this week in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, they did so arguing that “Planned Parenthood affiliates provide essential medical care to low-income individuals through state Medicaid programs.” A senior Planned Parenthood lawyer told the media, improbably, “It’s not about abortion . . . it’s about people’s ability to access basic services like birth control, like well-person exams, like cancer screenings.”
What they aren’t telling the American public is how Planned Parenthood is willing to put essential care at enormous risk to keep taxpayer funds flowing to its abortion-and politics-centered business model.
The Medina case arose after South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster (who is now in his second full term, having been reelected with 58 percent of the vote) issued an executive order to halt Medicaid funding to abortion businesses. Planned Parenthood sued, and federal courts obligingly forced the state to turn the spigot back on. Currently, two appellate courts have sided with South Carolina and five have sided with Planned Parenthood. This prompted review by the Supreme Court, which will decide if states can administer Medicaid funding without getting sued by private individuals.
The Court should rule in South Carolina’s favor. Failure to do so would harm unborn children and women and girls, erode entirely legitimate powers of states, and endanger Medicaid itself.
Medicaid is a partnership between the federal government and states, which are entitled to federal health care funding if they meet specific requirements. While the federal government sets the basic requirements for how Medicaid must operate, states have broad discretion in implementing the program. That includes terminating contracts with unqualified providers. States do this routinely, and they need to do so without crippling legal risks. John Bursch, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, who represented South Carolina at the Court, explains, “When states enter into that contract, they need to know the ground rules, and the ground rules do not include these private citizen suits.”
To date, over 9,000 providers have been disqualified. If the Court sides with Planned Parenthood, every one of them could “recruit a beneficiary and go to federal court and then line their pockets with the attorneys’ fees,” as Bursch noted Wednesday when Justice Kavanaugh rightly expressed concern about resource-wasting litigation. The effect would be staggering, costing states many millions of dollars and forcing them to divert resources and staff away from projects that actually help taxpayers. How many states would be crushed under this weight, or decide they’re better off not participating?
Even aside from these disastrous consequences, immunizing Planned Parenthood is wrong. Medicaid funds are for qualified health care providers — which Planned Parenthood is not.
Planned Parenthood is an abortion business masquerading as a health clinic, purporting to offer a wide variety of health care services. On its website, the organization presents itself as a guide to assist pregnant women in evaluating their options. It turns out that, despite the organization’s self-flattery, the one option it excels at promoting is abortion — providing adoption referrals, prenatal services, and miscarriage care less than 3 percent of the time. A brief from the nonprofit Charlotte Lozier Institute illustrates Planned Parenthood’s commitment to increasing its abortion market share:
Planned Parenthood saw 80,000 fewer patients in 2022–23 than in 2021–22, but it committed 18,560 more abortions. In fact, the number of abortions Planned Parenthood provides has risen 20% over the past ten years. At the same time, the number of other services Planned Parenthood provides has fallen sharply . . . over the past nearly fifteen years, Planned Parenthood’s cancer screening and preventative services have dropped by 71%, prenatal services by 80%, and contraceptive services by 39%.
We still sometimes hear the debunked lie that defunding Planned Parenthood harms women’s access to mammograms — a deceptive claim Barack Obama made as president and former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards implied in a 2015 congressional hearing. But Planned Parenthood never provided mammograms. Its branches don’t even have the equipment.
More than a few women describe their experience at Planned Parenthood as coercive. In another amicus brief in support of South Carolina on behalf of 138 women who’ve suffered at the hands of Planned Parenthood, a woman named Joetta recalls, “I actually wanted to leave and said I can’t do this [r]ight before the doctor started the abortion, but they just pushed me back and told me to calm down and they started the procedure with me crying and saying I wanted to leave.”
States need to be free to cut off Medicaid funding to providers who violate health codes and commit medical malpractice. There’s no special Planned Parenthood exception. Last month, a New York Times investigation confirmed what SBA Pro-Life America and countless pro-life advocates have said for years: Planned Parenthood facilities are unsanitary and unsafe. The Times discovered sewage leaking into patient recovery rooms, centers that routinely ran out of medicine, and numerous malpractice allegations, including botched abortions that not only killed babies but put women in mortal danger. Nearly $900 million distributed to affiliates in recent years went, as ADF observes, not to serve low-income patients but to lobbying and activism. Most recently, a Colorado 18-year-old died following late-term abortion complications in a case where Planned Parenthood allegedly asked emergency responders to turn the sirens off.
It should not entirely comfort us that the Hyde Amendment bars Medicaid from paying for elective abortions. Abby Johnson writes, “I worked at a Planned Parenthood in Texas for eight years . . . [Medicaid] money went into the same bank account that we used to pay our overhead costs, medical equipment, staff, and abortion doctors.” Planned Parenthood’s alleged participation in Medicaid fraud also includes double-billing and making false claims. One former Planned Parenthood manager testified:
I recall this instance where Planned Parenthood told the mother of a minor, about 14 years old, pregnant by a 17-year-old, how Medicaid could pay for the abortion by claiming the pregnancy was a result of rape. The mother knew that her daughter had not been raped and didn’t want to ruin the boy’s life just to pay for the abortion.
Assuming the Supreme Court sides with South Carolina, disqualified providers still have the option of administrative appeal, as oral arguments made clear. Planned Parenthood, however, never bothered to do that — instead, the litigious organization bypassed standard procedure and headed straight to federal court.
States must be able to use Medicaid dollars to promote health, not harm. When it comes to bad taxpayer investments, it doesn’t get much worse than Planned Parenthood. The abortion giant may want people to believe it’s the only game in town, but it’s not. Medicaid recipients in South Carolina, for instance, have well over a hundred better options for comprehensive care, between federally qualified health clinics and pregnancy centers that provide millions worth of free medical services a year. No one — not states, taxpayers, or Medicaid patients — benefits from forced funding of Planned Parenthood, and the Court should affirm that.